The dew-drop from the rose that slips

      Hath not the sparkle of her lips,

      My lady's lips.

      Than her long braids of yellow hold

      The dandelion hath not more gold,

      Her braids like gold.

      The blue-bell hints not more of skies

      Than do the flowers in her eyes,

      My lady's eyes.

      The sweet-pea blossom doth not wear

      More dainty pinkness than her ear,

      My lady's ear.

      So, heigho! then, tho' skies be gray,

      My heart's a garden that is gay

      This sorry day.

      When rathe wind-flowers many peer

      All rain filled at blue April skies,

      As on one smiles one's lady dear

      With the big tear-drops in her eyes;

      When budded May-apples, I wis,

      Be hidden by lone greenwood creeks,

      Be bashful as her cheeks we kiss,

      Be waxen as her dimpled cheeks;

      Then do I pine for happier skies,

      Shy wild-flowers fair by hill and burn;

      As one for one's sweet lady's eyes,

      And her white cheeks might pine and yearn.

      When the fields are rolled into naked gold,

      And a ripple of fire and pearl is blent

      With the emerald surges of wood and wold

      Like a flower-foam bursting violent;

      When the dingles and deeps of the woodlands old

      Are glad with a sibilant life new sent,

      Too rare to be told are the manifold

      Sweet fancies that quicken redolent

      In the heart that no longer is cold.

      How it knows of the wings of the hawk that swings

      From the drippled dew scintillant seen;

      Why the red-bird hides where it sings and sings

      In melodious quiverings of green;

      How the wind to the red-bud and dogwood brings

      Big pearls of worth and corals of sheen,

      Whiles he lisps to the strings of a lute that rings

      Of love in the South who is queen,

      Where the fountain of poesy springs.

      Go seek in the ray for a sworded fay

      The chestnut's buds into blooms that rips;

      And look in the brook that runs laughing gay

      For the nymph with the laughing lips;

      In the brake for the dryad whose eyes are gray,

      From whose bosom the perfume drips;

      The faun hid away where the grasses sway

      Thick ivy low down on his hips,

      Pursed lips on a syrinx at play.

      So ho, for the rose, the Romeo rose,

      And the lyric he hides in his heart;

      And ho, for the epic the oak tree knows,

      Sonorous and mighty in art.

      The lily with woes that her white face shows

      Hath a satire she yearns to impart,

      But none of those, her hates and her foes,

      For a heart that sings but for sport,

      And shifts where the song-wind blows.

      There is not aught more merciless

      Than such fast lips that will not speak,

      That stir not if I curse or bless

      A God that made them weak.

      More madd'ning to one there is naught,

      Than such white eyelids sealed on eyes,

      Eyes vacant of the thing named thought,

      An exile in the skies.

      Ah, silent tongue! ah, ear so dull!

      How angel utterances low

      Have wooed you! they more beautiful

      Than mortal harsh with woe!

      When the snow was deep on the flower-beds,

      And the sleet was caked on the brier;

      When the frost was down in the brown bulbs' heads,

      And the ways were clogged with mire;

      When the wind to syringa and bare rose-tree

      Brought the phantoms of vanished flowers,

      And the days were sorry as sorry could be,

      And Time limped cursing his fardle of hours:

      Heigho! had I not a book and the logs?

      And I swear that I wasn't mistaken,

      But I heard the frogs croaking in far-off bogs,

      And the brush-sparrow's song in the braken.

      And I strolled by paths which the Springtide knew,

      In her mossy dells, by her ferny passes,

      Where the ground was holy with flowers and dew,

      And the insect life in the grasses.

      And I knew the Spring as a lover who knows

      His sweetheart, to whom he has given

      A kiss on the cheek that warmed its white rose,

      In her eyes brought the laughter of heaven.

      For a poem I'd read, a simple thing,

      A little lyric that had the power

      To make the brush-sparrow come and sing,

      And the winter woodlands flower.

      Its rotting fence one scarcely sees

      Through sumach and wild blackberries,

      Thick elder and the white wild-rose,

      Big ox-eyed daisies where the bees

      Hang droning in repose.

      The limber lizards glide away

      Gray on its moss and lichens